José Maceda - Ugnayan (2009)

An important discovery of the original 1974 recording of a Maceda masterpiece! Recorded as 20 channels broadcast simultaneously on all of Manila's radio stations to the population gathered in public spaces with hand-held transistor radios, Ugnayan was a massive production supported by the Marcos regime intended to meld values of indigenous Filipino culture with modernist aesthetics. Though politically problematic and largely misunderstood, the effort involving the public in an avant garde, environmental music performance was an unprecedented achievement that has not yet been surpassed. Xenakis-like clouds of sounds from bamboo instruments, cymbals, gongs and voices are precisely notated in a 100-page score using complex polyrhythmic relationships that realize Maceda's unique textural style in its most concentrated and intense form. The composer supervised the separate recording for each radio channel onto high quality analog tapes and the result is the most stunning example of this important and neglected composer’s work yet released. Essential.